Asia

Asia

Russia, Mongolia agree to form uranium joint venture

14 December 2010 18:21 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Russia and Mongolia have agreed the conditions on building a joint uranium mining company, said a communique inked on Tuesday by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his visiting Mongolian counterpart Sukhbaatar Batbold, APA reports quoting Xinhua News Agency.

The agreement for creating the Dornod Uranium company was signed following the talks between the two leaders.

"The issue of uranium cooperation was not an easy one, but we have reached a discretionary decision and intend to sign the document to form the joint company," the Mongolian prime minister was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

The company would start mining uranium as early as in 2011, Seigei Kiriyenko, chief of the Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom, told reporters.

He said the initial investment for the joint project would reach some 300 million U.S. dollars, and the annual output of the venture is estimated at 2,000 tons.

Russian geologists explored the Dornod uranium field in Mongolia in the 1970s. The field was mined actively then and the ore was processed by Russia’s Priargun Mining Chemicals Association. In 2009, the idea of creating a joint venture to exploit the Dornod uranium deposit was agreed by the two countries during Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to Ulan Bator.